Jackleg Devotional to the Heart

Description

On The Baptist Generals sophomore album, the word heart repeats eight*** times. The Denton, TX band, known for its haunting, claustrophobic take on drunken folk, needed ten full years to bare its heartsone of which is in the album title, Jackleg Devotional to the Heart, a name that songwriter Chris Flemmons conjured shortly after he recorded, and then trashed, the albums first attempt in 2005.

Flemmons goes so far as to call this his love album, and its an apt descriptionthough love through The Baptist Generals eyes is plenty complicated. Jacklegs hearts dont resemble valentines. No smooth curls into a final point. The bands vibraphones, guitarrons and ambient feedback combine like a mess of ventricles, aortas and veinsnot to mention, from the sound of it, all of the blood spilled while Jackleg lurched for years toward an eventual finish line.

Call it a love record, then. Its the kind of love Flemmons had to figure out in the ten years since The Baptist Generals critically-acclaimed 2003 full-length debut No Silver/No Gold, a period in which he admits hes fallen in love with a wild spectrum of musicthe Ethiopiques series, saxophonist Archie Shepp, film scorer Meredith Willson, and plenty more. That wide spectrum only befits Jacklegs repeated need to buck genre; in fact, the 2005 version of the album hit the trash heap because it sounded like any other indie rock-type band, Flemmons admits. Co-produced by Stuart Sikes (Loretta Lynn, Cat Power, The Walkmen, Modest Mouse, The White Stripes) and the bands Jason Reimer, Jackleg Devotional to the Heart sounds like exactly no one else.